


Namaah’s Grace

by Eratoschild



Category: Final Fantasy XV, Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Anal Sex, Body insecurity, Crossover, Heterochromia, Insecurities, M/M, Masturbation, Mild Internalized Homophobia, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Scars, character with amputation, established relationship...of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 23:58:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19239715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eratoschild/pseuds/Eratoschild
Summary: How can perfection bear to serve the imperfect?





	Namaah’s Grace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stopmopingstarthoping](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stopmopingstarthoping/gifts).



> Note: While this is, indeed, Fleurentia, with Ignis as an adept of Camellia House and Ravus as a Vrallian dignitary in the Kushiel-verse, it stands unrelated to my fic Camellia.
> 
>  
> 
> Inspired in part by Imriel's visit to Balm house in Kushiel's Justice, and Phèdre's bestowing Nicola a lover's token as mentioned in Kushiel's Avatar.

To serve in the Night Court is to serve the divine, however often our patrons have only pleasure on their mind when they visit. But pleasure is a blessing, a gift of Namaah,ultimately from Elua himself. He knows none of his children are perfect but to serve Namaah as an adept of Camellia house, my sole reason for being is to appear to transcend imperfection in every way. As mortals are sometimes wont to forget that we cannot be perfect- be it inborn or by attainment, there is a certain draw to those whom we believe to embody the ideal. To appear on any way flawed is a sin in our service. Even our marques are rendered in such a way that they may never appear to be incomplete. Mortals are fascinated with the idea of perfection, and in patronizing my house, they get a brush with a small piece of it. More accurately, they believe they do. 

I could not say just how many assignations I’d had with the Vrallian Monsieur Nox Fleuret when the question finally arose, but I always knew it would. Returning patrons of Camellia House always ask eventually, in some way or other. Believing themselves to be amongst perfection, it raises questions in their mind.

_How can perfection bear to serve the imperfect?_

I could see it before he spoke. We had only just shared the kiss of greeting, I could tell that something was troubling him and set to assuage his worries.“Does it not trouble you, to lay with someone who can never match your perfection?” His asking was more plain than most others and he stuttered not over the question as was wont to happen in many cases.

It had been asked so many times, and yet the answer was never quite the same from one patron to the next. Sometimes it was easy, other times more difficult. 

This one was a little bit of both. The answer was on the tip of my tongue, always, but it was the one I was never supposed to give, although I was certain that most patrons knew very well already, somewhere deep down if not immediately on the surface.

We are _not_ perfect. This is merely an expertly-crafted and maintained illusion. I myself am often charged with instructing our apprentices on the very subject. By no means are we supposed to tell this to our patrons.

But there was little else that I could truthfully say that would satisfy Ravus. I knew that ultimately, I would rather say what I shouldn’t than insulting this patron, one who had become one of my favorites, one whom I had learned to love and respect.

“The truth is that we are not perfect. We are but children of Elua, no more perfect than you. It is but part of our service.”

“Then it is… a lie?” Ravus replied, confused.

“It is a part we play. In the same way that adepts of Orchis House are subject to the same moods as any other mortal, though their time with patrons is filled with joy and humor. Or how those of Heliotrope house do not in fact spent their lives devoted to a single patron. And yet, each creates those truths.”

“I see,” Ravus still appeared troubled.

“You are worried that I am hiding offense at your scars, at your eyes which do not match, at your arm. But you see, none of these things can give offense to me.”

“How is that?” Ravus asked, uncertain.

I stood before him and lifted a hand to trace a finger around one eye, then the other as I spoke. “How could your eyes, of such beautiful colors, ever offend?” I breathed, my voice reverent, sincerely so. “They are a rarity. That they should match could only deprive them their beauty, I am blessed to be held in their gaze.” Sliding my hand around the back of his head, I pulled him close to me, that I might kiss each eyelid, as delicate as the brush of a flower’s petal.

I bid him to sit on the bed, then I knelt, _abeyant_ in front of him. “May I undress you?”

After a long moment, Ravus nodded slowly, wordlessly. Gently, I pulled at the laces on his doublet, an understated affair of burgundy silk with silver embroidery, perfectly highlighting his silver hair. I Pushed it down his shoulders, pulling it carefully from his arm. Under it, he wore a shirt of misty grey fustian. Over this, I ran my hands, as reverently as I had spoken, feeling the muscle underneath expand and contract as he breathed, raining kisses over the fine cloth.

Untucking the shirt, I slid my fingers under the hem, drinking in the body heat underneath. Lifting the fabric higher and higher until I felt the edge of the scars.

“How could this ever offend? I asked as I uncovered them. It is but skin, marked by something no doubt terrible. And yet it is but skin. These scars are a storm etched upon your flesh.” 

“And my…arm?” he asked quietly of the one he was missing.

“For you, no doubt, it is a difficulty,” I replied. “For myself… how could I find offense from that which is not there?” 

The answer seemed to leave him somewhere between satisfied and not. Finally, he spoke again. “Perhaps you have a point,” he replied in a tone I could not read. 

Was that doubt? Hope? A mixture of the two, I thought. 

“Would you allow me to show you how very unoffended I am?” I asked, gazing at him with unfaltering eye contact, my voice becoming almost hushed. 

Many are under them impression that it is merely our bodies that are to be perfect in Camellia house. It lies also in in our actions, in our words, in everything we are, everything we do. In this moment, words were not enough, and they were too much. 

He looked at me for a long minute, unanswering, before he finally nodded. I stood, taking his hand with a gentle tug, that he would also stand. I slid my other arm around his waist, pulling him close to me as he studied me intently, fixated on my every action. 

I bowed my head, kissing his scarred chest, then straightened again, taking half a step back, my hands going to his hips, thumbs tracing over the edge of his breeches as I gazed into his eyes, feeling their weight, how watchful he was of even my most subtle movements. 

Plucking the lace of his black doeskin breeches, I untied the knot, my fingers dipping under the edge to slowly work them down, taking his small clothes as well. When they were low enough, I sank to my knees with all the grace and silence my training afforded, my eyes on a level with his phallus, I tipped my head back to take in the whole of him. “Would that you could see how beautiful you are,” I breathed.

“Pretty flattery, part of your playacting?” he replied in a husky tone. There was curiosity in his voice but no venom, a twitch of amusement played at his lips.

“Never,” I replied. “I speak only truth.”

He nodded silently. I was rather certain now that he believed me. He stepped out of his breeches and I put them to the side. Taking his phallus in hand to perform languissement, I watched as his eyes closed, my other hand ghosting over his thigh. By now I needed not the skills of my training, but only the knowledge of before, and the sight of the man at whose feet I knelt to know just how to convey Namaah’s blessings.

I used my mouth to bring him to his fullest arousal, it was but a matter of moments before his seed spilled hot in my throat, his fingers threaded somewhat roughly in my hair as he gasped and shuddered through his release. 

When finally he recovered, I stood and he pulled me close, kissing me at length. “Elua,” he muttered against my lips.

  
“Allow me to demonstrate further?” I suggested when he recovered. With a nod, his eyes fell closed. I slipped an arm around is waist and guided him to lie back on my bed. Kneeling over him, I stroked the tips of my fingers, as softly as a whispering breeze around each of his eyes as he blinked up at me, a question in his gaze but no words from his lips. leaning down, a let my lips follow the same path over his cheekbones and brow. 

“Let me worship you as a child of Elua deserves,” I whispered, “your body with my own. Let me show you Naamah’s grace.”

A flash of uncertainty flickered through that heterochromatic gaze but he nodded again, and I once more bent, mapping those contours with kisses once more as my fingers started to roam elsewhere, finding their way over flesh scarred but Elua only knows what. His breath shook against my cheek, heart pounded against my touch. 

Gentian mystic I may never be but I would swear that something was working through me, my body a conduit for the very hands of Namaah, or Elua, perhaps both, themselves. 

Something in the air seemed to shimmer faintly around us. No more words flowed from my lips, but my mouth, my fingers conveyed something deeper, something for which words were wholly inadequate. If that I am certain. 

How long I had spent paying such attention on his eyes, gazed into the violet and blue depths, I couldn’t say. But before I moved on, I knew each individual striation, each subtle shift in shade, the merest hint of contraction or expansion of his pupils. Years later, had I the skill of an Eglantine painter I could have rendered them perfectly on canvas. Alas, as I have no such talent, their image was forever confined to my memory. But for it being there, at least, I am grateful.

My tongue slid across every ridge and pucker of his scarred torso. Ravus had never volunteered just how it had come to pass, the scarring and the loss of his arm, and it was not my place to ask. I shuddered to imagine the horror of it, how it had scarred him in ways less visible than what lay before me, and if I had paid some attention to his eyes, I positively lavished it here, tracing the lines with my fingers and tongue in the patterns no artists brush could ever hope to replicate. After some time, I straightened to look down at him again, watching his face for reaction- eyes closed, but he looked peaceful. My eyes roamed his scars. The more I studied them, the more I could see somewhat of a horrific beauty in their whorls and ridges. 

His eyes opened, and after a few seconds he spoke, the question cynical but voice again carried only a tone of curiosity. “Have you sickened from the sight?”

“Never,” I replied, laying my hand back upon it. “Merely committing every inch of you to memory.

He huffed softly, in amusement, I was certain. “I am not memorable enough in all the times I have come to call here?”

“Oh you certainly are, but you are different each time.”

“Hmm,” was his only reply. His eyes took on a faraway quality and I paused in my attentions, certain he was wresting with some question.

“Might I ask something of you this time?” Came the question, halting, hesitant. “Make this visit…still more different?”

“Anything that is in my power to grant is yours,” I informed him solemnly. 

“Would you-“ He seemed unable to look me directly in the eye. I waited. 

“Would you,” he began again a moment later, “be the one to take me this time?” He finished, almost in a whisper. 

This took me by surprise, he had never wished it before, only always to be the one to take me. So many times, he had defied his Vrallian sensibilities enough to couple with a man, but only so long as he did not allow himself penetrated. That he was placing such trust in my hands to make himself so vulnerable spoke to me that I had done right by my trade and the canon of my house.

I stood to retrieve a vial of the oil that we use to ease the way of the act, placing it in reach. He was undressed but I was yet not. As I moved to remove my clothing, he put out a hand as if to touch me. I stepped within his reach, and he slipped fingers under my robe until they reached my inner thigh. I could feel the calluses, faintly scratchy on my skin.

“Go slowly,” he bid me. 

“As you wish.”

He retracted his hand and I allowed the robe to slide from my shoulders, down my arms to pool on the floor. His eyes roamed my body and I stood there, allowing him to look as he wished.

“In my homeland, it is said to be a debasement for a man to allow another...” he broke off, thoughtful. “When we join, it is hidden, in the dark. Even in one’s private home, very often we do so without even the light of a lamp. I have seen that here it is not true. I think I prefer the D’Angeline custom.”

“I certainly prefer it myself.”

I moved to join him, reaching for the vial but he took my wrist, gazing at me in consideration before I could grab it. 

“Before that, would you...,” he hesitated again. “Might I see you...pleasure yourself for me? You are such an example of male beauty unlike that which I’ve ever known and I wish to see you in completion without the distraction of my own. 

I nodded my assent. “How do you wish me?” I asked in a whisper. 

“I care only that I can see you.”

I brought a basin of water and a cloth to the table for after, then did I join him on the bed. I knelt, he sat facing me, watching, considering. “Do you wish for me to perform any particular acts?”

“Do as you like, what pleases you.”

I took myself in hand, and made long, slow strokes along my shaft, quickly coming to full arousal. My eyes locked on Ravus, I showed him, unabashedly, my enjoyment of Namaah’s blessing. For his part, he never looked away. As I stroked myself with one hand, I brought the other to fondle my balls, he never took his eyes away. It wasn’t the first time a patron had requested to watch me but I dare say no previous occasion had felt nearly so intimate as this one. Truly it was an act of pure worship and as a stroked myself closer to my release, I could not keep the names- his, and the name of Namaah from escaping my lips over and over until they melded, it seemed into one. Only seconds before the final moment, he reached out, his hand warm and rough over my own and together we brought me to the edge and over it, his name my final gasp as my seed spilled, pearlescent white over both our hands. 

As I regained my breath, unbidden he took the cloth from the basin and cleaned me with a tenderness I’d not seen in him before. “Thank you,” I whispered, a slight rasp to my voice. I’d not expected this show of softness.

“It is I who must thank you,” he replied in a grave voice.

“You are welcome. I will, of course, need to recover before I am able to continue.”

“As you require,” he replied. “May I get you some water?”

Taken aback by the offer to do what is usually my part, I nearly stumbled on my words but it would be a hopeless flaw for me to refuse and so I accepted with all the grace I had in me.

“I know it is not normally your way, but you’ve shown me so much and it is the least I can do,” he explained as he poured some water from a carafe that I keep in my chamber. 

“Thank you,” I said as I took the goblet, drinking readily. “Did you see...that which you wished?”

“I’ve never heard my name...like that. It was like...as if you were praying.”

“In our way, I was. This is how we pray, how we worship, we who serve Namaah.”

We lay there together, when I finished the water and placed the goblet safely. Until I was able to be ready again, i spoke to him of our Namaah’s holy sacrament as I committed every line and ridge of him to still deeper memory. When again my own body was ready I asked him, “Do you still wish me-“

“Yes,” he interrupted. “More so now than before.”

Once again I took the vial, poured a generous portion into my hand and spread the oil over my phallus as it grew hard. His eyes, burning with want, watched my every stroke. 

“Lie back,” I instructed him when I was finished with myself. I tapped gently at the inside of his thigh and he spread his legs, allowing me to drizzle some oil between his cheeks. 

He reclined before me looking almost like a fallen angel with his married beauty. I wished only to touch him, to show him the grace of Namaah as I had promised. 

“Do let me know if you should wish to stop or if you hurt in any way because it should not,” I whispered, gazing down at him and brushing silver strands from his face. He nodded his understanding and I positioned myself to enter him, watching his reaction. I could see anticipation etched across his body. He nodded again and I slowly pushed against him until his flesh yielded, just as slowly. He let out a soft hiss. “Am I causing you pain?”

“No, I just...did not know how it should feel to...receive. But it is not painful. Merely unfamiliar. Go on.”

I went no further but bent to kiss him, long and deep, the need in his body, in his soul, palpable. When I felt him relax beneath me, I continued and moments later I was sunk completely within him, hot and tight. Slowly, I withdrew almost completely before pushing back in. It was thus that I set the slow pace he’d requested, supporting myself on my arms as I leaned to kiss him again with the deepest desire, and received his kiss in return. We drank of each other in a holy communion of heartbeats and soft breaths, growing harder with each moment. I kissed every inch I could reach of his scarred skin, each of his eyelids again and again and before long, his gasps rose in pitch, I moved only slightly faster, adjusting the angle of his hips as I did, that I may enter him more deeply.

And then did he start to moan, a tension took hold of him, and for the first time that I recalled in all his visits, did I hear the faintest whisper of Namaah’s name from his lips, much the same as from my own. 

It seemed only seconds later, that I heard my own name, and then did he shatter in my arms. Only then did I find my own climax, immaterial in comparison to anything else that had transpired between us. I cleaned us up as he’d done for me earlier, and settled back beside him.

A weightless mantle of calm settled over us, and we lay together, I could not say for how long. When finally he opened his eyes, it was to study me silently for long seconds. When at last he spoke, his words were unfortunate. “I will be returning to Vrallia. We are to leave in three days’ time. I do not know that I will have the chance to come here again, with the preparations to be made and the business to conclude.”

“I am sorry to see you go,” I replied and without another word or thought, I stood. 

“Where are you going?” he asked, a look of confusion crossing his beautiful face.

“Just here,” I said, stopping at my shrine to Namaah and removing an item from it. Returning to his side, I placed the item in his hand, folding his fingers closed over it. “Please take this.”

He unfolded his fingers and examined the small gift. “What is this?” he asked, turning it over. 

When an adept of Camellia house begins their full service, before taking a first patron, they are bestowed with a token, a perfectly round, pale rose quartz carved on both sides with a perfect camellia. A lover’s token, which they may then bestow upon any patron at any time in their service that they see fit. Some gift theirs to their first patron, many to the patron who’s gift allows them to complete their marque. 

“It is a lover’s token, it allows you to see me here in the house as such, and not as a paying patron.”

He studied it, long and hard before looking at me again. “But I am departing. Would it not be better gifted to one who will be able to use it?”

I shook my head, feeling a sad smile gracing my lips as I did. “I would much rather you take it and remember today when you look upon it. And perhaps it will give you a reason to return one day.”

He nodded, silently and touched it to his lips, contemplating. “I will treasure this above aught else.” 

Soon, he was dressed and set to depart. “Before you go…” I stopped him.

“Yes?”

I said no more but instead, stepped closer to kiss him one last time, deeply first and then a kiss of greeting.

“The kiss of greeting?” he blinked in confusion.

“Further assurance that I will see you again, and as a lover,” I explained, understanding settling in his features in the wake of my words. “Elua and his companions keep you until that time.”


End file.
